UC Receives National Recognition for Community Service

The University of Cincinnati is recognized as a national leader among institutions of higher education for its support of volunteering, service learning and civic-engagement. The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) named UC to the 2010 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for engaging students, faculty and staff in meaningful service that achieves measurable results for the community.

The CNCS admitted a total of 641 colleges and universities to the honor roll for their community service programs. The President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll recognizes institutions of higher education that support exemplary community service programs and raises the visibility of best practices in campus-community partnerships.

UC’s Center for Community Engagement (CCE) reports that over the 2009-10 academic year, approximately 12,711 students engaged in some form of community service, whether it was volunteering in the community, building homes with Habitat for Humanity over spring break, or aiding disadvantaged communities around the world. Kathy Dick, director of the Center for Community Engagement, says that this also includes the estimated 4,575 students who earned academic credit through UC service learning programs, enhancing the work of what they’re studying in the classroom by benefiting the community.

The Center for Community Engagement reports that over the 2009-10 academic year, UC students offered a total 226,125 hours of community service. That includes the annual student-organized Relay For Life to benefit the American Cancer Society.

Other innovative service programs that earned UC recognition included UC’s Zoo-Mates partnership with the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden and Project Connect. The partnership matches UC student mentors with children in Cincinnati who are experiencing homelessness.

Another UC partnership with Project GRAD Cincinnati – Bearcat Buddies – matches UC student tutors with third-through-eighth grade students in selected Cincinnati Public Schools. The Bearcat Buddies program was launched with 62 students in the College of Allied Health Sciences in spring 2010. Dick says the program now has 160 UC students from all disciplines of study, serving as tutors to as many as 350 children in Cincinnati Public Schools.

UC has forged a collaborative partnership spanning both academic affairs and student affairs that serves to create deeper, more sustainable partnerships with the community. Under student affairs, UC’s Center for Community Engagement is dedicated to connecting the University of Cincinnati and the community through service. UC’s Office for Community-Engaged Learning under academic affairs supports students, faculty and community partners to ensure that the community-engaged learning experience at UC is a benefit to all involved.

The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) oversees the Honor Roll in collaboration with the U.S. Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development, Campus Compact, and the American Council on Education. Honorees are chosen based on a series of selection factors, including the scope and innovation of service projects, the extent to which service-learning is embedded in the curriculum, the school’s commitment to long-term campus-community partnerships, and measurable community outcomes as a result of the service.

CNCS is a federal agency that engages more than five million Americans in service through its Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America programs, and leads President Barack Obama’s national call to service initiative, United We Serve. For more information, visit NationalService.gov.

Full Honor Roll List